Poll results detail Proposition 8 win

Economic status, religious beliefs played key roles

SAN FRANCISCO 
A post-election poll shows that voters'economic status and religious convictions played a greater role than race and age in determining whether they supported Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 ballot measure that outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

Although the initiative passed with 52 percent of the vote, the Public Policy Institute of California reported yesterday 48 percent of voters in the Nov. 4 election oppose the idea of making gay marriage legal. Another 47 percent of the survey's 2,003 respondents support it, while 5 percent are undecided.

Those findings mirror previous institute polls from the last three years, suggesting neither the state Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the state nor the $73 million spent for and against Proposition 8 did much to change public attitudes on allowing gay couples to wed, said survey director Mark Baldassare.

“At no point in time, before or after the election, did we have a majority of Californians saying they supported gay marriage,” Baldassare said. “Until there is a major shift in public opinion one way or another, it's going to be another issue where voters are deeply divided.”

Proposition 8 overturned the high court's 4-3 ruling by amending the state Constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman. The same court has agreed to hear a legal challenge early next year brought by civil rights groups that are arguing voters alone lacked the authority to make such a constitutional change.

The Supreme Court's justices also plan to consider the validity of the 18,000 same-sex unions sanctioned in California before the measure's passage. Same-sex marriage supporters have indicated that if the court doesn't rule in their favor, they would attempt to repeal the gay marriage ban at the ballot box in 2010.

But the demographic details of the PPIC poll don't bode well for such an effort, according to Baldassare.

Gay rights activists can't assume their cause will be won as older voters, raised when homosexuality was illegal, die off, he said.

The latest PPIC poll shows Proposition 8 also got strong backing from voters who didn't attend college (69 percent) and voters who earned less than $40,000 a year (63 percent). Age and race, meanwhile, weren't as strong factors as assumed. According to the survey, 56 percent of voters over age 55 and 57 percent of nonwhite voters cast a yes ballot for the gay marriage ban.

“There are socio-economic factors in play, and we are not seeing great changes in socio-economic status in California,” Baldassare said.

People who identified themselves as practicing Christians also were highly likely to support the constitutional amendment.

Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California, said the PPIC poll demonstrates same-sex marriage advocates “need to make inroads in every category. If 2 percent of voters had voted differently, we would have had a different result,” he said.